Managing session state with html::mason - perl

Question

I'm using HTML::Mason with Apache2 mod_perl2 for a project and am unsure what's a good way to manage session state easily.
Please don't say use Catalyst. I normally do, but not on this occasion.

Answer 1

After struggling with this for a long time I finally have a working solution:
This is using mysql to store session data so that no matter which front-end server you hit, you will get the same session data.
You will need a db with a table called sessions made with this:
CREATE TABLE sessions (id char(32), length int, a_session text);
This is in MySession.pm in my INC path.
package MySession;
use DBI();
use Apache::Session::MySQL;
use Apache2::Cookie;
sub start_session($){
my ($r) = #_;
my $cookie_name = 'mysite-session';
my $cookie_domain = '.mysite.com';
my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=db;host=host.com";
my $dbuser = 'admin';
my $dbpass = 'password';
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $dbuser, $dbpass, {'RaiseError' => 1});
my $session_cookie = Apache2::Cookie->fetch($r)->{$cookie_name};
my %cookie_hash;
if(defined($session_cookie)){
%cookie_hash = $session_cookie->value();
}
tie my %session, 'Apache::Session::MySQL', $cookie_hash{SessionID}, {
Handle => $dbh,
LockHandle => $dbh
};
my $cookie = Apache2::Cookie->new($r,
-name => $cookie_name,
-domain => $cookie_domain,
-value => {SessionID => $session{_session_id}}
);
$cookie->bake($r);
return \%session;
}
1;
Then on any page you wish to use/modify session data:
% use MySession;
% my $session = MySession::start_session($r);
% $session->{variable} = "Wow, I have a cookie";

Answer 2

Looks like I've found the answer in
MasonX::Request::WithApacheSession